City of Powell River has responded to a call from the provincial government to make recommendations about private managed forest land.
At the Tuesday, July 16, committee of the whole meeting, chief administrative officer Russell Brewer said the committee discussed the private managed forest land program review underway by the province at the July 2 committee of the whole meeting. The province is seeking feedback from individuals, organizations and local governments.
Brewer said at the July 2 meeting, staff was directed to bring back a report with some suggested feedback for council’s consideration.
He said the committee might recall one of its motions at the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) convention in 2018 was regarding private managed forest land. A lot of that formed the basis for feedback the city could provide to this review.
Brewer said UBCM did a forestry survey a couple of years back and the city provided feedback for that as well.
He said there were three main recommendations that could be made by the city and they were consistent with the UBCM resolution and feedback the city has provided the UBCM in the past.
One of the recommendations would be that amendments to the Private Forest Managed Land Act are required to give local government more authority over the use of private managed forest land within municipal boundaries because there is very little, currently.
“The act restricts local government authority over private managed forest land,” said Brewer.
The city could also provide feedback that amendments are required with respect to the exit fee adjustment factor. An exit fee is paid if the property is withdrawn or removed from managed forest land class within 15 years. The fee is based on the difference between the tax paid as managed forest land and the tax that would have been paid had the property not been managed forest land class, with a discount related to the number of years classed as managed forest.
“You’ll recall that the assessments for private managed forest land are quite low and the intent for that is to encourage long term forest management and retention of that land for forest management,” said Brewer. “What we’ve advanced at the UBCM in past and in ministerial meetings is that those exit fee factors are really quite low and not long enough. If you hang onto it for 16 years you can pull it out from managed forest land without any exit fee factors, which seems counterintuitive to retain it over the long term.”
Brewer said the third recommendation could be that amendments are made to require consultation and sharing of plans, or management intent, and long-term intentions around disposition or selling the lands.
Councillor George Doubt wondered if the city could add another amendment to require that privately managed forest lands meet the regulations and standards equivalent to crown forest lands. The letter will be sent to the minister of forests, lands, natural resource operations and rural development with Doubt’s addition.
In the letter to the minister, written by Brewer, he states there is a significant amount of private managed forest land within and adjacent to the city. The local government and community would benefit greatly from the landowner sharing the management commitment, operations map, harvesting plans and supporting assessments and long-term disposition or development intentions for the land, stated Brewer. The benefit of sharing such information would be the coordination of private managed forest lands landowner activities and plans with community planning initiatives.
Brewer stated that about 245 hectares of private land within city boundaries are classed as managed forest land. He added that these lands are being harvested at a rate suggesting they are not being managed for long-term production and harvesting of timber, but rather, short-term liquidation and disposition.
“This is arguably inconsistent with the intent of the managed forest property classification to encourage private landowners to manage their lands for long-term forest production,” he stated.
